Greyhawk: A New Era

Slow Healing and Dying

Slow Healing

Characters do not regain hit points at the end of a long rest. Instead they regain their hit dice and may spend those hit dice to regain hit points if they so choose. Any unused hit dice may be used throughout the day during a short rest.

Slow Dying

When a character drops below 0 HP they do not die. After 1 hour if they are still at negative hit points and have not been stabilised they make a death saving throw; a result of 1 counts as two failures. The character continues to make additional death saving throws each hour until they fail 3 death saving throws and die or they succeed. After a character passes a death saving throw they can choose to spend a hit dice, increasing their hit points to their constitution modifier + the result rolled. If a character has no hit dice left than they must succeed on 3 death saving throws in order to stabilise. If a character is stabilised through an external aid, they must still wait 1 hour before they can use a hit dice. Magical healing heals a character, but they must regain a number of healing equal to their negative hit points before they can regain consciousness.

A character that is unconscious cannot gain the benefits of a short or long rest and so cannot regain hit points if they do not have any hit dice left. For each day they remain unconscious they gain 1 level of exhaustion which can be healed by long term care or divine magic. If they have survived 1 week while unconscious they may regain all hit dice and hit points, but are still exhausted. Their exhaustion decreases by 1 level for each additional day they rest.